


Wild Inside

by Lady Lecter (RoNask)



Category: Hannibal Lecter Tetralogy - Thomas Harris
Genre: AU, F/M, mutant!au, shapeshifter!au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-12
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-04-22 03:19:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14299641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoNask/pseuds/Lady%20Lecter
Summary: Clarice can feel him creeping inside her mind again and there is a sound responding to it, perhaps a growl, perhaps a purr, she can't determine.





	Wild Inside

The sight of the piece reminds her of a lost conversation in the dungeon, a memory of something she had buried, a memory that she shouldn’t be surprised that he would touch. Still, it makes her swallow and it burns, makes her look at her shoes in an instinct.

 

He had been drawing, she had been reading the file, they had fallen silent for a while. Then he spoke:  
“Have you seen it?”  
She raised her head and a pair of eyebrows. When he saw he found the look of confusion on her face sweet and enticing, something he would store in his Memory Palace for later.  
“The creature that you share a body with” he clarified.  
Her shoulder tensed and she looked away, feeling the familiar buzzing she heard when he was watching her too intensely. “I have never transformed”  
Not even when she was twelve, the normal age for the transformation to happen for the first time. Sometimes, babies would turn into cubs but that was rare and required a strong and feral lineage. Dangerous people could come from such high born compositions.  
Clarice was reminded of the first time they met, it was also the first time she saw him in his animal form. A big scarred lion with the most intense eyes she had ever seen, it was an unsettling sight that such powerful man would also have a powerful creature for animal side.  
She licked her lips and faced him, found him watching her and wasn’t surprised by it.  
“That wasn’t my question, Officer Starling” he pointed out.  
“No,” she said.  
“But you have thought about it”  
There was no point in lying. “Yes”  
“What were your parents?”  
“My father was a shepherd dog”  
He smiled. “It seems that you are surrounded by them. Will Graham surrounded himself with shepherds, yet he couldn’t deny the wolf inside of him” a pause as he studied her form. “Sometimes, the parents do not determine their cubs” she could feel him trying to crack her mind open.  
“Is this what happened to you, Doctor?” she shot quickly and saw him smile, he wasn’t disappointed.  
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, my dear, but no”  
A lineage of lions, now that was something.  
“When did it happen?” the question was out of her mouth before she even thought of it.  
Another smile from him. “I was a young man when it did, hid from the other boys my age. The only lion around foxes and hyenas, some dogs and a few rare farm animals. Do you believe the animal determines one’s personality, Officer Starling?”  
“No”  
“I didn’t think you would, yet we have a suiting creature for Dr. Chilton, wouldn’t you agree?”  
“Not quite, peacocks are meant to show their feathers to their partners, not to themselves”  
He smirked, very pleased. “Oh but his comments made me believe he put a show to you”  
“He did, actually. I wasn’t really interested”  
“So I thought. Barney then?”  
“Perhaps, yes. Perhaps the personality shapes the creature”  
“A good theory too, certainly food for thought” his gaze moved down, back to his drawing. “Would you take a guess on your own animal?”  
“I think I’d rather wait”  
“Clarice,...”  
“I’m not lying. There is no hurry on knowing”  
“Yet people look at you differently for it”  
“Sometimes but they already do for other reasons”  
He paused and made a small movement with his head as if considering her observation.  
Lecter went silent then and so did she, her mind going through what he had said, considering just as he was doing.

 

The sight of her face on the winged lioness makes her tense for more than one reason and she wants badly to leave the room. It feels as if he had read all of her secrets, she could feel him creeping back inside of her mind  
A sound echoing in the back of her head, a response from a now revealed creature. The sound of a lioness, perhaps a growl, perhaps a purr, she couldn’t determine, her thoughts were clouded.  
Looking at Krendler she knew she had to leave soon.   
The lioness was awakened.

**Author's Note:**

> Oh, yeah.


End file.
